Lot Essay

This overtly erotic drawing represents the more sensual, fleshy, and volumetric nudes that appear in Schiele's drawings and watercolors from 1914. The artist continued the line of inventive poses that he had explored the previous year, but his rendering of the female body, which had hitherto been graphically flat on the page, now gave way to figures that appear to occupy actual space. The contortions of her legs in the present drawing nevertheless preserve an element of spatial ambiguity. Discussing similar works on paper from 1914, Jane Kallir has written:

"Schiele's drawing style suggests an underlying structure of muscle and bone...[his] growing concern with plasticity eventually generates a more organic, fluid line. There are hints of almost conventional realism in the simplification of line and in the integration of contour and volume. As a result, skewed perspective--always an influence on the poses--now assumes a more disturbing character" (in cat. rais. op. cit, p. 527).

The feathery crosshatching and energetically coiled lines of the present drawing reflect the impact of Schiele's involvement with printmaking on his draftsmanship. Schiele began making prints in February of 1914, but abandoned the project six months later. The resulting etchings and contemporaneous drawings display what Kallir has called "stitchlike cross-hatching" and she noted that "It is impossible to determine whether the technique simply carried over into the etching media or rather evolved from it" (in ibid., p. 520). Similarly expressive marks also appear in the woodcuts of German expressionist artists such as E.L. Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff as of 1913. Schiele continued to use this technique until he was drafted into the Austrian army in 1915.

The model's direct gaze and provocative position in the present work suggest that Schiele openly invested his drawings with the informal poses and blatant sexual display found in popular erotica. Whereas his models from 1910 are completely nude, Schiele furnishes this female figure with stockings, a pattered robe, and a coquettish choker, transforming the timeless nude into a partially naked modern woman.